


Gemini

by Saucery



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Adolescent Sexuality, Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Twins, Amorality, Animal Metaphors, Bad Touch, Badwrong, Brother-Sister Relationships, Brotherhood, Brotherly Love, Character Analysis, Coming of Age, Consent Issues, Conversations, Creepy, Cross-Generation Relationship, Dark, Depraved, Dissociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Drama, Dubcon Kissing, Dubious Consent, Dysfunctional Family, Evil, Family Feels, First Kiss, French Kissing, Fucked Up, Genderfluid, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Inappropriate Behavior, Insecurity, Internalized Homophobia, Kissing, Lust, M/M, Multiple Personalities, Multiple Selves, Murder Kink, Possession, Predator/Prey, Psychoanalysis, Psychological Drama, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Psychology, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Psychopaths In Love, References to Knifeplay, Sculpture, Seduction, Self-Discovery, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Identity, Sisters, Teenagers, Therapy, Twins, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Underage Character(s), Villains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 10:21:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2618336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal would do anything for the welfare of his patients. Anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gemini

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the-rightful-queen-of-the-damned](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=the-rightful-queen-of-the-damned).



* * *

 

Hannibal did not make it a habit to have favorites. Impartiality was a necessary prerequisite to making accurate diagnoses, and Hannibal was a stickler for professionalism. Nonetheless, he couldn’t deny that his heart—such as it was—lightened whenever Will Graham was due to visit him.

Will was terribly young, in that youth _was_ terrible for him, an affliction he was desperate to be cured of. Hannibal, however, found that very youth enchanting, and was strangely drawn to Will’s sharp edges, despite knowing that those who dared to touch Will were inevitably left with bloodied fingers.

Abigail was charming, too, whenever Will presented as her. She was mousy and timid, but beneath that timidness lurked a dangerous creature, a carnivorous mermaid of the deep. Of course, the “real” Abigail was long dead; it amused Hannibal that he was counseling a dead girl. Abigail had been Will’s twin, and her murder—to which Will had been a witness—had so traumatized Will that he had rejected her loss on a fundamental level, adopting her personality as his own. It was an extreme example of prosopopoeia, accompanied by dissociation.

Thus, there were days when Hannibal spoke to Will, and days when he spoke to Abigail.

Today, Abigail sat on the plump armchair beside the fireplace, and Hannibal was stationed on the chair opposite, nursing a fragrant cup of tea. He didn’t take notes during his sessions, as he had a flawless memory, and he did not treat his patients as academic exercises. Psychiatry was an art, a type of intuition that bordered on witchery, and witchery was a craft Abigail was intimately familiar with.

She watched Hannibal through Will’s changeling eyes, and there was a coiled poise to her that resembled that of a serpent. Hannibal marveled at the completeness of this forgery, at the absolute perfection of Will’s impersonation of his sister. It had an intricacy that was enviable, and Hannibal caught himself admiring one detail or another, as he might admire the brushstrokes of a master artist.

Will’s body was a living, breathing canvas upon which Abigail’s expressions, posture and mannerisms were painted. As Hannibal had seen video recordings of Abigail, provided by Will’s parents, he could recognize her false modesty on Will’s features, the vulnerable set of her mouth, the precise angle at which she bent her arms before wrapping them around her knees, as if trying to tuck into herself and disappear. While Will’s anger was honest, Abigail’s took many forms, like a chameleon’s, prior to revealing itself.

“I know you want to fuck him,” Abigail said, abruptly, after what had been a relatively harmless conversation.

Ah. So the serpent had struck. “You are not incorrect,” Hannibal admitted, because to do otherwise would insult her intelligence—and, by extension, Will’s. Limited honesty was preferable to outright deceit, when it came to these two, and if managed skillfully, it did leave some room for prevarication. “That does not imply I will act on that desire.”

“Am I part of the reason you want him?” Abigail tilted her head curiously; Will’s curls fell to one side, baring his long, lovely throat. Will’s refusal to cut his hair since Abigail’s passing had given his already delicate bone structure a deliciously androgynous cast.

“His ability to forge you is, yes. He’s remarkable.”

“He sure is,” Abigail said, with mingled bitterness and affection and, perhaps, envy. Interesting. “But you also want the rest of him, don’t you? If you get the chance, I bet you’ll fold him in half and fuck him till he screams.”

Hannibal went very, very still. That image flashed vividly across his mind, immobilizing him, and when he regained control of himself, he saw Abigail’s eyes gleaming like a cat’s, clever and triumphant. “You shouldn’t encourage me,” Hannibal chastised her. “I’m bad enough by myself, thank you.”

“Maybe you _should_ act,” Abigail said, picking on the frayed fringe of Will’s worn Led Zeppelin T-shirt. “You could cure him, with that. You could fuck me right out of him.”

“Is that why you’ve been resorting to these uncharacteristic profanities, recently? Because you’re hoping to recruit me for a particularly depraved rescue attempt?”

Abigail scowled. “I did swear when I was alive.”

“Very rarely, I’d wager.”

“Will swears _all the time_ , though.”

“He does relish it, doesn’t he?”

“He’s too much of an idiot to hide it when he’s genuinely pissed off.”

“Ah, but he has the genius to construct you.”

They exchanged a fond look, each of them dwelling on Will. Eventually, Abigail said: “Well, will you?”

“You do realize you’re asking me to murder you. Again.”

Abigail shrugged. “I’m not alive, anyway. Not really. I’m Will’s phantom. He allows me to possess him, occasionally, but…” Her shoulders—Will’s shoulders—slumped. “I’m tired. I wanna sleep. Forever.”

“And why do you reckon my deflowering him will get rid of you?”

“He’ll confess to you about it, soon. He has suspicions about Garret Jacob Hobbs, suspicions that are connected to sex.”

“How convenient it is, that he cannot recall your consultations with me, but that you recall his consultations with me.”

“I wouldn’t be a very effective self-defense system, otherwise,” Abigail said, dryly.

“He’ll miss you fiercely, when you’re gone.”

“He’ll get over it,” Abigail said, steely-voiced. “He has to, or he’ll never live his own life.”

“You love your brother a great deal.”

“It’s a pretty raw deal, actually. Dunno if it’s rawer for him or for me.”

Hannibal did have a predilection for raw meat, but that was neither here nor there.

The clock chimed.

“Alas, our session is at an end.” Hannibal rose and shook Abigail’s hand, savoring the roughness of Will’s calluses. “It was a pleasure, as always, Miss Graham.”

Abigail snorted. “Not as much of a _pleasure_ as Will.”

And with that, she departed, leaving Hannibal in quite a fix.

 

* * *

 

A week later, Will showed up for his usual appointment. It was immediately evident that he was himself, not Abigail, because he walked jerkily, awkwardly, all gangly boyishness and clumsy adolescence, as if his limbs were sabotaging him. He had none of Abigail’s grace, but he was more beautiful for that. Will had the potential of an untuned violin; he had yet to find the music within himself.

“Tea, Will?”

“No, thanks,” Will said, pacing back and forth restlessly.

Hannibal went through the meditative motions of brewing his tea; history had taught him that Will was best left to his devices when he was in these moods, and that he would, at length, initiate communication on his own.

Therefore, Hannibal took his steaming cup to his chair and settled in, sipping from it, letting its subtle, leafy scent wind its way into his nostrils. He let his eyelids drift downward, reopening them when Will finally broke the silence.

“It’s been five years.” Will’s fists were clenching and unclenching, and he was fairly buzzing with an unstable energy. “I saw that bastard stab Abigail when we were twelve. We’ll be seventeen, next month.”

“You mean, you’ll be seventeen,” Hannibal reminded him, gently.

“ _We’ll_ be seventeen. Don’t give me that bullshit, Hannibal. You’ve met her, haven’t you? She’s here. She’s with me.”

“She might not wish to be.”

“Shut the hell up. She’s my twin. She can’t abandon me any more than I can abandon her.”

“No need to be uncouth, Will,” Hannibal said, mildly. “I am only concerned for your health.”

“You—” Will huffed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. I… I can’t remember what you talk to Abby about, but I can feel that she’s… that she appreciates it. Whatever it is you do.”

“Does she?” What a gratifying surprise. Hannibal doubted Will would be as conciliatory if he was aware that Hannibal was colluding with his sister to kill her again. “But what about you, Will? You’ve obviously had an epiphany, albeit a disturbing one. Would you share it with me?”

“I just—I’ve been having these—dreams,” Will said, struggling to put what was troubling him into words. “About this.” He dug into the pocket of his jeans and retrieved a miniature carving of a stag.

For an amateur’s work, it was a powerful carving, tiny though it was. There was an oddly feral menace to the stag, a menace that would ordinarily be associated with a predatory animal, not a herbivore.

Will had developed a peculiar obsession with stags after his sister’s murder, because the killer, Hobbs, had been a hunter, and the cabin to which he had taken the twins after abducting them had the horns of various stags mounted on the walls.

Carving wooden statues of those stags was the reason for Will’s calluses, the sole coarseness on his otherwise smooth skin, skin that Hannibal often fantasized about cutting, caressing.

Hannibal fitted his hands around his cup, in lieu of wrapping them around Will’s slender, fragile neck.

“I did research online, about the stag being a symbol for… for sexuality,” Will said, tucking the stag away, out of sight. “And I…” He glanced at Hannibal, briefly, because unlike Abigail, he was uncomfortable with maintaining eye-contact. “I’ve been…”

“Have you been having dreams of a sexual nature about what you witnessed on that fateful day?”

Will whipped around to stare at Hannibal, shyness momentarily forgotten. “How could you tell?”

“It’s my job, Will.” Hannibal didn’t add that he had the advantage of receiving inside information from Abigail. “Who was the sexuality directed toward?”

“Abi… Abigail,” Will said, turning red. “But it wasn’t me, feeling that! It was—I dreamt I was Hobbs, and I—” He tugged at his hair in frustration. “I hate those dreams. Hate them. If Hobbs hadn’t shot himself after hurting Abby, I’d have shot him, myself. I definitely don’t want to _be_ him.”

“Does the version of Hobbs that you inhabit differ from your erstwhile perception of him?”

“Yeah, it does. I never dreamt I was him, before. I just dreamt I was me, and sometimes I was Abby, and sometimes I was the both of us. But I was never… I never cared about what drove him. He was a raving psycho. What sane man would’ve wanted to kill Abby?”

“And yet, your dreams are positing a new theory for what Hobbs wanted from her.”

Will hunched, as if shielding himself from a physical blow. “I think—I think he wanted to… have sex with her.” Will’s face twisted. He ground his knuckles into his eyes, as if he would rather gouge them out than revisit what he had seen in his dreams.

Nonetheless, it was unavoidable. “Did he assault her sexually in those dreams?”

“No. No, but—it was there in him, like killing her was f-fucking her.”

“You are suggesting that his murdering her was, at least partly, a sublimation of his sexual urges.”

“That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

“On the contrary. It is a popular theory in forensic psychology, especially when it comes to serial offenders like Hobbs.”

“Jesus.” Will ruffled his hair. “Why have I just started dreaming about this? Why not when it happened?”

“You were not a sexual being, at that age. You likely perceived _something_ peculiar in his behavior, something that wormed into your subconscious, ready to hatch when you had your own sexual awakening and were capable of empathizing with an adult’s sexuality. When you witnessed the crime as a preadolescent, murder was all you could understand, but it was not all you saw. You sensed Hobbs’ impure motives, but could not fathom where to place that knowledge, or how to interpret it, until you matured sexually. Correct me if I’m wrong, Will, but have you been having sexual thoughts about certain acquaintances of yours?”

Will’s gaze snapped away from him. His earlier blush intensified, tenfold.

“Will?”

The boy studied his shoes as if they held the mysteries of the universe. He scuffed a sneaker against the thick carpet. “No,” he mumbled.

“Will, you are an awful liar.” Hannibal felt his blood heat; he knew, oh, he knew who Will wanted. Will was as transparent as a cathedral window, as bright and pure and breakable.

“I… I get what you’re saying, okay? Case closed. We don’t have to discuss the, um, other stuff. I’ve figured out why I was having those dreams; that’s what matters.”

“Those dreams will keep haunting you until you address your repressed sexuality.”

Will flinched. “Who said I was repressing anything?”

Hannibal set his cup aside on the ebony-and-enamel coffee table, and stood. Will shrank from him, but Hannibal approached him, regardless. “Will,” Hannibal said, as kindly as he was able, given that his fingers very much wanted to curve into claws, and his teeth very much wanted to bite. “It’s all right.”

Will was cornered against the mantelpiece by the time Hannibal reached him, palpably frightened. “You… you know,” Will whispered. “You know how I feel about…”

“It has come to my attention, of late.”

“You’re—you’re not mad at me?”

“Do I seem angry to you, Will?”

Will hesitantly looked up at him, and continued looking at him, as if arrested by what he saw. “You seem scary,” he said, hushed and shivery, because he had begun to shiver, faint tremors that ran through him as Hannibal cupped his jaw.

In the warm glow of the fireplace, Will’s eyes were the color of clear apple cider, with a hint of honeyed gold in their depths. Hannibal envisioned what Will would look like if all of him were similarly illuminated, from his soft thighs to his small, dark nipples. Hannibal imagined biting purple bruises onto that milk-pale skin, secret markers on a map of his own creation. The lakes and continents would be etched in crimson, with the blade of a razor or a knife, and Hannibal would taste them with his tongue, all copper and salt, as Will gasped and writhed. Would Will orgasm in spite of or because of the pain? Hannibal couldn’t wait to discover that.

“Oh. Oh, god,” Will rasped. “You—you want me _back_.”

“My dear Will,” Hannibal said, lifting Will’s chin for a kiss, “you have no idea.”

He kept the kiss chaste, at first, the better to not startle Will. He brushed his lips against Will’s, over and over, until Will’s lips parted tentatively. To enter Will’s mouth was such a delight that Hannibal shuddered, overcome with the force of his hunger, and Will quivered in response, like a plucked chord.

Will was hot and achingly sweet, intoxicatingly defenseless, a veritable feast of virginal inexperience. Hannibal guided him, sipping from him and devouring him by turns—a slow, thorough, careful violation, so as to not alarm his prey. The kiss went on and on, tender and deliberate, inescapable as a siege. Hannibal feathered his fingers along the pulse of Will’s throat, light as spiders, and Will mewled as if Hannibal _had_ slit it, had bled him like the good boy he was, like he would be, like Hannibal would train him to be.

Hannibal didn’t stop until Will’s knees began to give way, and even then, he withdrew in wet, clinging increments. He lingered, gradually making the kiss shallower and shallower, until he was exhaling against Will’s damp, trembling lips. They were swollen now, obscenely slick and glossy, just as they would be if they’d been sucking cock.

Will was exquisite in his ruination, his very soul stripped naked for Hannibal’s enjoyment. His palms were pressed flat against Hannibal’s chest, as if to push him away, but Will’s lostness had been replaced with a distinct sense of having been found, and his eyes were wide with wonder.

It was tempting to kiss Will again, to take it further, to drive him to Hannibal’s home and debauch him on Hannibal’s four-poster bed, on silk sheets that would susurrate with Will’s every movement.

Hannibal’s demeanor must have betrayed his intentions, because Will’s shaking resumed. He was so enchantingly confused, torn between lust and terror, that Hannibal took pity on him, stepping to the side and giving Will the space to escape—which Will did, promptly.

“I… I should… I need to go,” Will said, and fled from the office.

Hannibal was not disappointed. Will would return, growing more eager to learn with every lesson Hannibal taught him. As Hannibal brewed himself a fresh cup of tea, he reflected on just what form those lessons would take, and what material he might cover in the curriculum. It was a pleasant diversion.

Yes, it was wildly inappropriate—and unprofessional, besides—but, as Abigail had suggested, it might be Will’s only recourse. Will’s fear of what Hannibal would do to him was, essentially, a fear of what Hannibal would _evoke_ in him; that is to say, it was a fear himself. Of his true nature.

Hannibal privately believed that it was this nascent, denied sexuality of Will’s that had so entrenched Abigail’s murder—and Abigail herself—in his mind. The initial trauma had latched onto Will’s self-denial and become an ingrained, undeniable aspect of him, as difficult to remove from his psyche as it was to excise a tumor from the brain. Using the liberation of Will’s sexuality to unhook his trauma from his identity would resolve a considerable portion of Will’s psychiatric problems, including Abigail. In accepting himself, he would set his sister free.

Abigail would die so that her brother could live. Just as she had before.

While it was a shame to lose a patient like her, who was such an erudite and entertaining conversationalist, Hannibal would always, given the choice, choose Will.

Hannibal did not make it a habit to have favorites, but Will was an exception.

 

* * *

**fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> Like my writing? Want updates and sneak previews? Follow me on [Tumblr](http://saucefactory.tumblr.com/)!


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